In 2016 a photo briefly emerged on the internet in which Utkin appeared together with Russian President Vladimir Putin. All who saw it treated it like proof that Putin has a state army, and his own private army. An army for all circumstances – even a sudden palace rebellion.
Utkin first fought in Syria on the side of President Bashar al-Assad as part of the Russian mercenary group Slavic Corps. After suffering a defeat from the rebel forces, the Slavic Corps returned to Moscow and its leadership was sentenced to prison: mercenaryism is formally illegal in Russia.
Upon returning to Russia, Utkin departed to Ukraine, heading his own group of mercenaries. Its name, Wagner, comes after Richard Wagner, a favorite composer of Adolf Hitler, for whom Utkin allegedly holds affection.
The Slavic Corps veterans were seen both in the Crimea in February 2014 and then in Donbas, where they fought alongside Russian militants. According to the Russian media, the Wagner squad could have been involved in the killing of several warlords of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic.”
Well-paid private military companies are an increasingly important component of Moscow’s strategy in the Donbas and elsewhere providing the Kremlin with a serious force that it can use as it likes and then plausibly deny whenever that suits its purposes, according to RFE’s Andrey Dikhtyarenko.
Among the many such Russian companies are Wagner, MAR, E.N.O.T. Corp, and the Slavyansky korpus, whose mercenaries make from 2500 to 6,000 US dollars a month, far more than Russian soldiers are paid and thus at least in principle far more ready to do whatever they are ordered to against non-Russians or against insubordinate Russian forces.
You are confused. The Orkrainian name is assigned to the evil done by the Azov Nazis [the Fighting Ukrukhai]: rape, targeted murder of civilians, human shields, pillage, et cetera ad nauseam.